


The Cold Heaven

by Somewheresomethingincredible



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, BAMF John, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Kink Meme, M/M, Minor Mary Morstan/John Watson, Multi, Mutual Pining, Pining, Poor John, Post-Season/Series 02 AU, Sexual Content, Sherlock Holmes Has a Heart, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-24 01:42:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4900687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Somewheresomethingincredible/pseuds/Somewheresomethingincredible
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the death of his best friend, John must learn how to exist in the real world again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cold Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> This was written right after Series 2, and therefore is an AU seeing as we now have Series 3 and this is not how it went down. It was a fill for the kink meme way back when, and was posted on FF.net, but never finished. It's mostly finished now but the newer parts need some editing so it will be posted in two parts.

In the end, John goes back.

It’s not that he wants to. The flat is so full of the life that he and Sherlock shared – because really, what’s the point in denying? John’s life, by the end, was almost impossible to disentangle from Sherlock’s – and he chokes on it. He’s not even inside the flat proper when it happens. On the ninth stair, John’s leg wobbles and he braces himself against the wall, his ribs rebelling and seeming to crush his lungs.

They’d both collapsed on that step after the Pool, dizzy with adrenalin and shaking in the aftermath. The stairs are nowhere near wide enough to accommodate two grown men, but when they were half-sprawled on top of each other, personal bubbles resolutely abolished for the night, they fit quite nicely.

He worries that it’s too soon.

But Baker Street is all he has left. The detritus of Sherlock’s storm, the flotsam he’d left bobbing on the skin of the world in his wake, is scattered there. John finds he can’t resist. The pull of their ( _his,_ now) flat is inexorable, a hook around his aorta.

His hand shakes as he opens the door.

The flat is as they’d left it, dragged down the stairs to waiting cars. An unbidden smile quirks John’s mouth, the first in a week. He was glad he’d punched that arsehole, even if it had led to a very brief arrest. It had been worth it for the little surprised smile from Sherlock that John had watched him cover up with a glib remark, as always. Always so shocked to find someone on his side, willing to stand up for him…

_No. Stop it._

It’s far too quiet. There is the hum of the refrigerator, the rumble of traffic and the ticking of a clock from Sherlock’s room. Ironic, that. Time really isn’t anything special now, to John. When the most important moments of one’s life have already gone by in a few thumping heartbeats, the passage of time feels a bit superfluous.

He’d been back to the flat, once before this, but it was in a state of curious numbness that John now realizes was shock. Pity they hadn’t kept that blanket.

The first time he’d been back, it was like his body didn’t know how to be in this place without _him_ to revolve around. It kept expecting a lanky body to stroll past him and throw itself down onto the sofa in a snit, and John felt himself moving his feet out of the way of nothing at all. He’d given the chair at the kitchen table a wide berth, though it was pushed in, and caught himself before he leaned over to peer over a missing, bony shoulder at the now abandoned experiments. When he left the flat, he left the door open, and he was halfway down the stairs before he realized that there was no-one to follow him through it.

John is aware now. The fog of shock has dispersed and the emptiness of the house closes in, clear and cold. He looks at the sofa. There is a dressing gown strewn across it that he’d not noticed before. Blue. He’d liked that one best, and had often wondered if it was as soft as it looked. He’d never permitted himself to find out.

It _is_ soft, as it turns out. Well past things like awkwardness and boundaries and shouldn’ts, John lifts the fabric to his face. It stutters against the growth of beard he hasn’t had the energy to shave. He makes the mistake of inhaling.

It smells like John imagined it would, like pilfered cigarettes and camphor and his soap.

 _So this is what I was missing_ , John thinks, and crumples to the carpet.

*

It’s stupid, but John just wants the coat back.

He’d intended to avoid St. Bart’s, for the rest of his life if at all possible, but he finds himself striding towards it one afternoon. His leg protests as he crosses the road (other end of the block from where that biker knocked him down, _don’t think about it_ ) and starts up the sidewalk. He resolutely does not look up or down, just forward. If he thought about it, which he _can’t_ just now, he’d realize that he’d walked over a now-faded stain on the concrete.

Molly is in the morgue when John slips in. She jumps a bit when he clears his throat.

“Hello,” he says as she whirls to face him. The colour drains from her delicate face and her brows pull together. _Guilt_ , is the first flash of deductive thought that flickers across John’s mind, but he dismisses it. She probably just feels bad for not speaking to him at the funeral. More likely, she feels pity. Poor John, alone again.

“John!” she says, too cheerful. “What are you – I mean, how are you doing?” She pauses, mortified. “No. Silly question. Um, what can I do for you?”

John breathes deeply.

“I was just thinking, maybe, I mean, they tend to keep things like that, evidence and whatnot, and perhaps if it wasn’t a bother… I just don’t see how it could shed any light on the… situation, and if it’s just going to moulder in an evidence bag…”

John trails off, and Molly looks expectant.

“Sorry, what is it you’re looking for?” she asks eventually.

“The… the coat, the one he was wearing… It’d be in evidence, or something. don’t they – you, I suppose – keep the clothes or something?” John tries to smile in what he hopes is a genial manner. He knows it falls flat as Molly’s face twists.

“Oh, John. I, um, thought you’d have known. They… um. They buried him in it.”

*

What John doesn’t know is this: Molly cried harder than anyone in attendance at Sherlock’s funeral. She was near the door, and watched the back of John’s head through her tears. She watched as he sat, ramrod straight in his pew next to Mrs. Hudson, and she knew he wasn’t crying. That was almost worse. She felt she owed it to him, to have someone really grieve for _him_ instead of Sherlock. Molly knows she doesn’t have to grieve for Sherlock. At least, not as much.

*

Another thing John doesn’t know is that the coat is nowhere near that cemetery. It is, in fact, doing its level best to warm its owner as he shudders in the hold of a cargo ship crossing the North Sea. Sherlock runs a hand over his face and _aches_. The thrum of loneliness and wanting in his chest makes him long for home. Not the flat, precisely, though a chair by the fire seems pretty good about now. No, Sherlock aches for jumpers and the smell of tea and two-fingered typing and bickering and a lined, honest face. The agony of it makes him think of the last withdrawal he suffered. At least then, he knew it would end, eventually.

He suspects this withdrawal won’t.

*

John sleepwalks through half a year.

After a few weeks he gets a job, at a different surgery on the other end of the Bakerloo line. The clinic in Lambeth is small and drab, but John needs to get out of the house. It’s too cloying, all the things he hadn’t said buzzing around him like so many flies. The flat stinks of things held back and John needs out.

The Tube is good. John can zone out, rock with the motion of the train and not be expected to engage with anything. It’s perhaps his favourite time of day, the commute. He stares at ads for Vodafone and the newest sensation on the shelves at Waterstone’s and doesn’t have to feel a thing about it.

Dealing with patients is easy. John slips into the costume of the reserved, concerned medical professional and helps people. It’s not enough, and probably never will be. But it’ll do for now. At least when he stitches these people, these strangers up, he isn’t distracted by sheaves of pale skin revealed by rucked up clothing, or the press of an insistent pulse under his hand. He doesn’t have to literally force these patients to _dammit, could you stay still for one second while I get this stitched?!_ and he therefore doesn’t feel the thump of a heartbeat beneath a graceful breastbone as he holds them in place. It wouldn’t have the same impact, anyway. There are no bright, glacial eyes watching him keenly, so there’s really no room to compare.

After six months of this, of avoiding Harry and Lestrade and anyone else whose gaze might soften at the sight of him, John wakes up one Tuesday appalled at his life. It’s not a special day, not any anniversary or milestone; the six month anniversary passed two days prior and John had purposefully let it pass without incident. He hadn’t gone to the grave, though perhaps he should have. It had been almost too much that first time, when he’d gone with Mrs. Hudson (the only person he permitted to turn a gentle expression on him). Besides, John hadn’t cried in months, and had no intention of breaking a streak he’d been rather hard-pressed to maintain.

But this Tuesday, ordinary day sandwiched between ordinary days, John awakes with every muscle in his body taut. It isn’t waking from a nightmare that makes him so, though those are frequent and John has yet to get used to them. It was one thing to wake with the taste of blood in his mouth, scrabbling at his eyes to rid them of phantom sand and clutching at his treacherous leg. No, since _that_ day they’ve been radically different, and John knows he will never entirely purge them from his mind. It is a far different beast he grapples with now. There are falling bodies, always, and he always feels that impact on the sidewalk as though it were an impact on his own body. His mind fixates particularly closely on the slide of dark curls through a red pool as the body is turned over, supine. Nightly, he watches his best friend seep life onto the concrete until the whole world drowns in it and John never knows what to do.

He’d suffered through one of those the night before this Tuesday. It had woken him at three AM, shaking and keening out a broken version of his friend’s name. But he’d slept again, dreamless this time, and when he woke up it was with a profound distaste for this inaction. He is still sad, devastated, undone, but his nature is rebelling and a small, suspiciously baritone voice in the back of his mind chides him for his stagnation. _You are more than this_ , it says. _You’re letting him down._

So John gets out of bed and calls in sick. He dresses with more care than he has in months, makes tea and leaves the flat. When winter had set in, late this year, John had shamefacedly dug out his cane and had been relying on it ever since. He bypasses it this morning without a thought and goes down the stairs and out onto the slushy sidewalk on steady, sturdy legs.

John takes the Tube to St. James Park station and gazes back when people catch his eye. He exits onto Broadway and strides into the building opposite. Familiar faces gape at him, and he doesn’t blame them for that. He holds them accountable for a lot, but not for their shock at seeing him.

Lestrade’s office hasn’t moved. John is mildly surprised that he makes it that far without at least being asked what the hell he’s doing there, after six months of silence. People just don’t know what to say.

John knocks and is answered with a familiar, weary “yeah, come”.

He opens the door. He has clearly interrupted a meeting, but evidently not a vastly important one. Donovan turns in her seat and goes stock still, eyes frozen on his face. John barely glances at her and focuses on the Detective Inspector.

Greg Lestrade looks like shit. His hair is a touch too long and it doesn’t suit him, and the smudges beneath his eyes match the shadow along his jawline. He’s lost weight. John looks at him and realized he’d missed the man. They’d always got on, and John begins to wish he hadn’t severed all contact.

Lestrade is the only one who isn’t surprised. He looks at John a bit expectantly, but with patience behind his eyes. God, if patience were currency that man would be rich.

Now that he’s here, though, John isn’t actually sure what he came to say or do.

“Let me prove you wrong,” was what came out. Lestrade furrowed his brow and Donovan looked as though she was halfway between a scoff and a sob. _Poor sod_ , he sees in her eyes, _taken in by the freak, he believed it all._ “Let me show you that what he did was real. I watched him do it for a year and a half and while I’m not him, I’m not blind, and he taught me how to look.” John’s breath catches in his throat, but then, he’s intimately used to that feeling now. “One case is all I’m asking for.” _Let me start to fix what’s been broken._

Donovan has abandoned all pretences and looks furiously astonished. She stands and opens her mouth to speak. One look from Lestrade and her teeth click shut into a grimace.

Lestrade gazes at John for a long moment. He doesn’t smile, but he nods.

Something small clicks back into place in John’s chest, and he breathes easier.

*

Two days before John strides into New Scotland Yard with more purpose than he’d felt in six months, a cold, sad man huffs cloudy breaths into empty cemetery air. Not much of the snow has been disturbed. Mourning is best when it’s convenient, picturesque. Sherlock stamps his feet in the drift and breathes into his hands, wishing he’d remembered his gloves.

This was not a smart idea. Returning to Britain was a death wish at best, but when Sherlock had found a way to do so that coincided with a potentially significant date he’d bundled himself into an air freight container at the Ulaanbaatar airport. China hadn’t been pleasant, mostly, but Shan hadn’t been the only strut supporting The Black Lotus and with Mycroft’s help and finances, Sherlock put a significant dent in their doings. When they discovered who he was and what he was up to, though, they’d chased Sherlock from the country and he’d been meandering in Mongolia for over a month.

“I really shouldn’t even be proposing this, given I know you probably won’t listen when I tell you not to do it.” His brother’s voice over the phone had been threadbare.

“Don’t be obtuse, Mycroft. It’s unbecoming. Of course I won’t listen.”

He couldn’t risk London. It was too well-observed, and John might spot him. Sherlock chose a place where he could watch John to his heart’s content without fear. The cemetery wasn’t under surveillance, Mycroft made sure of it. All Sherlock had to do was wait, and he’d be rewarded with at least a glimpse. Maybe that would ease the knot in his chest that seemed to grow larger and gnarl further with every day he spends away.

Sherlock checks his watch. It’s nearly three PM. Are there delays on the Tube? An emergency? Surely there must be, otherwise John would be here. John is a creature of habit, of patterns if nothing else and the six month anniversary would warrant a visit in his mind.

Sherlock waits, hunched under the tree with his hands in his pockets, smoking furiously and billowing the grey of cigarette after cigarette into the frigid air like a dragon.

Mrs. Hudson visits around three-thirty and leaves a sprig of holly sitting in an Erlenmeyer flask that she must have brought from the flat. Something clenches in Sherlock’s throat at the sight of her, a small purple speck against the snow, bent over with sobs that he can only just hear from his hiding place.

_Where is John?_

She leaves after a half hour, and Sherlock waits well into the dark hours for a man who doesn’t come.

*

Molly Hooper feels like she is losing her mind, just a little.

The weight of her secret is bowing her down, and she finds it hard to look people in the eye when she speaks to them. It feels like everything she says is a lie, even if it isn’t.

She has taken it upon herself to keep an eye on John. Not for Sherlock, though he often texts her to reap the benefits of her vigilance. It’s for her own sanity. She needs to know that John is safe and surviving, needs to be there for him even if he doesn’t know it. She organizes her work schedule around his as best she can, and resolutely pushes labels like _stalking_ out of her mind. It kills her to watch John hobble through the days, but at least she has concrete answers to Sherlock’s questions.

_What did he do today?_

_SH_

 

_He went to work. Stopped at_

_Tesco on the way home._

_The chip and pin machine_

_worked fine._

_< 3Molly_

The texts showed up on a more or less regular basis, and usually from a different number each time. Molly dutifully recounts John’s activities, even when it’s the exact same as the last time he asked. Molly can also tell when Sherlock is feeling especially lonely. He’s painfully easy to read, when it comes to John.

_Has he smiled today?_

_S_

__The answer is always no, and Molly needs one avenue in her life to be honest in.

_He hasn’t smiled in months._

_< 3Molly_

The sideways hearts are more reflex now than anything. She does love Sherlock, but she hates him too, most of the time.

John doesn’t do anything outside of work. He doesn’t go to the pub, he never eats out, even regular trips to Tesco are done with minimal human contact. He never notices her as he goes back and forth with his menial business, but then, Molly rather suspects that John doesn’t notice much anymore. She feels a bit foolish, tailing the poor man (what for? Even if he were in danger, the best Molly could do was dial the mysterious number marked M that Sherlock had entered into her contacts before he left). But it is her penance, she thinks, to watch the devastation that Sherlock’s – and by proxy, her own – deception has unleashed on John Watson.

Then one icy Tuesday in mid-January John is not at his Tube station on time to get to work. Molly waits for twenty minutes and ends up late for work, but John doesn’t show. It is odd, but not unprecedented. John’s immune system has taken a turn for the worse, with the weather and his lack of regard for himself. He’s been plagued with two colds and one flu in six months, and had made his stalwart way to work even when ill. He’d begged off three days in total, all at the height of the contagious periods of illness. Molly imagines this is less to do with his own comfort and more to do with the safety of his patients. In some things, John hasn’t changed at all.

Molly is understandably shocked when she returns from her lunch break that day to find John in her morgue.

Moments before, she’d been re-reading the last text she’d received from Sherlock, two days before ( _He didn’t show. S_ ) and wondering if maybe something more than the obvious was wrong with John. Therefore, the sight of him leaning over a body that hadn’t been there when she left threw her for a loop. She reflexively shoved her mobile into the pocket of her lab coat.

“Hey, Molly,” said Lestrade. Molly hadn’t even noticed him standing next to John. John’s eyes flick up to meet hers.

It is strange to have his gaze on her again after so long avoiding it. The sight of those deep blue eyes makes her want to break down sobbing and tell him everything. Anything to make the gauntness in his cheeks and the hollowness of his expression go away.

Instead, she says: “Um, hi.”

John’s attention goes back to the body, and Molly breathes again.

*

Greg waits with bated breath.

At first, John Watson had been an anomaly – Sherlock never had company, nor did he work with anyone, so who was this limping man he’d brought with him to the crime scene in Brixton? Greg had quickly realized that while John was certainly anomalous, he was more than a bit miraculous, too.

It had been amazing to watch, the way the two men had affected each other. Greg had known Sherlock for almost five years and had firmly made up an opinion of his character. Standoffish, brusque, acerbic and arrogant, the man struck Greg as someone who would never change his ways unless his work depended on it. It had been easy for Greg to press this advantage; threats to bar Sherlock from crime scenes had made a far better incentive to get clean than threats of incarceration. But somehow, something in John had called to something in Sherlock. Two lonely men with something to prove had met at the right time and the result had truly been incandescent. Greg wasn’t the only one to notice the thread of energy, of awareness, that formed between the two men. It wasn’t Greg’s well-developed gaydar that really tipped him. He’d always classified Sherlock as a non-entity when it came to that, and before John he’d never been given cause to change that view. And John’s demeanour was so inherently bloke-ish that Greg hadn’t really made the connection between the way John looked at Sherlock from day one and potential non-platonic feelings.

He was shocked, and a bit heartbroken, that the men hadn’t seen it in time.

But now, six months after Sherlock’s – call a spade a spade, Greg – suicide, John has woken up again. A concerned party had kept Greg apprised of John’s descent into rote, mundane existence, and it killed Greg to know how much of this strong, capable man’s vigour and vitality had been sapped out. He’d been hoping for months that John’s innate need for danger, for the thrill he’d gotten with Sherlock, would manifest as a return to the Met instead of some sort of crazy thrill-seeking spree that would end with him sprawled, broken somewhere. So when John had come into his office that morning and asked to be let in on a case, Greg had no intention of refusing.

John leaned down, very close to the victim’s neck, inhaled once, and straightened up, nodding.

“Mid-forties. Cause of death is not immediately apparent. Those stab wounds,” he indicates the garish slices in the flesh of the victim’s hairy belly, “are a red herring, they would have bled a lot but not enough to cause death within the timeline that you gave me on the way over. There’s a tiny puncture wound on the side of his neck, but there aren’t any of the conventional signs of poisons that might have been administered that way.” John lifts the victim’s medical records, which he’d thus far left untouched. “Ah, yes, I’d suspected as much. He is fatally allergic to peanuts, but an actual nut or traces thereof might have been noticed and raised suspicion. The victim’s throat swelled closed without pressure from the outside and the autopsy found no allergens in his stomach, so it appears that the puncture on the neck is the result of someone introducing the allergen with a syringe. From the girth of the puncture wound, I can guess the gauge. Thick ones like that are only used for longer needles. The needle was long enough to deposit the material directly into the oesophagus. The stab wounds were administered first, to subdue the victim, then the needle was used when the victim was injured, to deliver the fatal injection. It wouldn’t show up on a tox screen, nor would it be noticed in the autopsy. I’m going to hazard a guess that the murderer filled a syringe with peanut oil. It’s readily accessible and would have absolutely done the trick. The patch around the puncture has a slight sheen to it, and it smells faintly of peanuts. There must have been a bit of seepage from the wound that the murderer wiped off. Any blood would have come off, but the oil that escaped clung to the skin, just enough to leave the shine of the substance and the odour.”

Greg can do nothing but blink. John isn’t finished.

“The murderer would have needed to be relatively close to him to know about the allergy. The victim didn’t wear an identification bracelet, or at least there wasn’t one with the clothes you showed me, so he either wasn’t terribly forthcoming about it, he wasn’t concerned about it or he thought everyone was aware. There is clear evidence of carpal tunnel in the right hand, though you said he worked as a gardener. That profession is not conducive to this sort of repetitive stress injury. What is conducive to it, however, is extensive time spent at a keyboard. If you check his browser history, I think you’ll find the victim spent most of his time online. This infers that his social life may have been lacking, and suggests an introverted personality. An introvert wouldn’t go around telling people about his peanut allergy.”

John moves to the victim’s shoulder.

“Look here, at these long thin scratches.” He points to a crosshatch of light, barely visible scars and scratches on the body’s right shoulder and upper arm. “He was a cat owner.”

“But his file says he was allergic to cats,” Greg interjects meekly. “Quite violently allergic, actually.”

“Yes, I saw. But these scratches have no swelling or rash around them, and the victim shows no sign of the congested sinus or hives that go along with his degree of allergy. That, coupled with the abundance of brown, tan and black hairs on his trouser legs and the front of his jumper, indicates that he kept a Bengale cat, one of those hypoallergenic ones, I’ll wager. The scratches are from when he picks it up and it clings to his shoulder through his clothes. They’re not deep or random enough to be aggressive scratches, and there’s evidence of where it’s happened many times.”

“There was no cat. At the flat, I mean.”

“Was there cat paraphernalia? A bed, a food dish, a litter box?” John’s face has a familiar look on it, one that Greg never thought to associate with anything but keen cheekbones and all-knowing eyes. Greg vaguely remembers a dish on the floor by the refrigerator. He’d dismissed it at the time, but nods now.

“Those cats are worth thousands of pounds. Did any of the suspects you interviewed have a cat, or show signs of it?”

A realization floors Greg.

“His ex-girlfriend had about five cats. I only remember because it was murder trying to get all the hair off my trousers after I left.” _What better to hide a tree than a forest?_

“Did one of them look like a tiny leopard, by any chance?”

He nods slowly, unable to look away from John. This sad, small man had seen dozens of things his forensic team had missed, and essentially just solved the case after a short debrief, a look at the clothes through an evidence bag and ten minutes with the corpse.

Now, Lestrade has always counted himself a loyal man. When Sherlock died and all his exploits were being debunked, Lestrade had protested. No matter what most of his team wanted to believe, Greg had seen Sherlock do extraordinary things, and no-one could entirely convince him that it had been fabrication. He wasn’t willing to dismiss them that easily. That was another reason he’d let John in on the case: the past six months had been the worst in half a decade at work, for the simple fact that there was no longer a consulting detective to puzzle out the cases that stumped them. So really, he hadn’t needed any convincing that Sherlock’s methods worked, but to see them in action through _John_ was a revelation.

“That’s brilliant.” It just slips out.

John’s answering grin puts every light in Britain to shame. “I know.”

*

They find a stack of unpaid bills at the ex-girlfriend’s flat, and a set of emails in her sent box organizing the sale of Nefertiti the ludicrously expensive cat. It turns out that the murderer had been up to her ears in both credit card debt and rent payments, and the £7000 that the buyer was offering would have taken most of the heat off her neck. It didn’t help that she’d borrowed money from her decidedly shady cousin and now he and his “friends” wanted it back. According to Lestrade, when they went to bring her in, she cried and pleaded and bribed with money she didn’t have, then tried to appeal to their sense of pity. Lestrade had given her a much deserved response about how premeditated murder in order to steal a _cat_ was not cause for pity.

John is exhilarated by his success. His deductions are different: they are based on the years of medical training he’s received as opposed to a vast general knowledge base. But John knows how to look, now, how to look for patterns and aberrations and anomalies. He doesn’t think he would be of much use at a crime scene unless the body was still there. He is wrong about this: he starts being asked to crime scenes two months in and fits right in. But he knows now, with a fierce sense of pride, that he’s made the doubters think twice.

Now, Lestrade calls him in. It’s shocking, the dichotomy of excitement and jarring nostalgia that surges through him whenever it happens. The pain of missing Sherlock is worse now than before, actually, because John’s _letting_ himself miss Sherlock. For months, he has blocked it all out, deadened the nerves and put on his blinders. He had put everything of Sherlock’s that wouldn’t moulder or spontaneously combust into the downstairs bedroom and closed it up. The door has remained closed for months.

John keeps it closed, still. Even as he works his way through six more months, these ones filled with more life and human interaction, John just _can’t_. While he is no longer in denial about everything, John still finds himself falling into old patterns: picking up the phone to text Sherlock (he even goes so far as to type _We’re out of_ – into the text box one day before realizing), he buys too many groceries and finds himself making tea for two more often than not. So, John makes meals for Mrs. Hudson more frequently and drinks a lot of tea.

And the _wanting_ is back, now. For months all John could think of was Sherlock falling and bleeding and broken and gone. Now, every so often, the way John used to think of Sherlock resurfaces. He goes dry-mouthed at the thought of a long, pale throat, of the lush curve of cupid’s bow lips, even sometimes allows himself to imagine placing gentle hands on slim hips and…

These imaginings are worse, almost, because they remind John of what he never had, will never have, now.

But even when John wearily realizes one day that yes, he was stupidly _in_ love with Sherlock, it doesn’t change the everpresent weight in his chest that much. John had acknowledged that he loved Sherlock a long time ago, and the notion of being _in_ love with him is just a new definition for the connection he felt. That, or John’s grief had always known how he felt about Sherlock.

The year anniversary comes far too quickly. John is splitting his time between locum work at the clinic and working for Scotland Yard, now in official capacity as consultant with a paycheque to go with it. He never really had to worry about losing the flat, Mrs. Hudson being who she was, but he hated to feel like he was taking advantage of her. He pays the full rent for the flat still, the rent he and Sherlock used to split. With his two jobs, now, it’s not really a problem. Lestrade and his higher ups are more than generous.

It was gratifying to watch the turnaround in the Met employees. Lestrade had believed in Sherlock and his methods from the start. But to watch Donovan and Anderson slowly turn from resentment and anger to abashed wonderment while watching John, an ordinary, average man, apply Sherlock’s methods was truly recompense enough. Dimmock had been a bit ambivalent at first, but when a chance meeting brought him into contact with Molly, that changed quickly. Dear Molly, with her unwavering support of a man who, in life, had been nothing but unkind and rude to her. She and Dimmock formed an instant, if shy connection, and within a month they were dating. Needless to say, Dimmock changed his tune to match hers very quickly.

When John idly mentions one day at a crime scene that he’ll be heading up to visit Sherlock in a couple days, it turns more than a few heads.

“John, mate, are you… feeling alright?” Lestrade hazards tentatively after a few tense, silent moments.

“Well, I mean, it’s hard to fathom, really. A year without him, I mean. And I suppose I’m alright at the moment, yeah. I just haven’t been back to his grave since…”

A collective breath is exhaled.

“Christ, John! Thought you’d gone off your nut, there, for a moment,” Lestrade says with a nervous smile.

“Greg, if he were alive, I’d know about it by now,” John says sadly. “I mean, I held out stupid hope for a bit, but when there was nothing… I knew him well enough to say that he wouldn’t have let me believe him dead for this long. Even he isn’t that cruel.”

John doesn’t notice Molly, who is on the scene to pick up the corpse, go stock-still and squeeze her eyes shut in anguish.

* 

John also doesn’t see a CCTV camera, complete with microphone, pointed directly at him from a discrete corner. At the other end of the connection, Mycroft Holmes has to look away. The trust, still that damned unshakable faith, astounds and humbles him. It also makes him want to flay his brother’s hide from his flesh. But that would be hypocritical, because really, Mycroft is helping to keep Sherlock away. Encouraging it, even. The consequences – Mycroft glances back at the resigned, sad-eyed face on the screen – do not outweigh the benefits of Sherlock unravelling Moriarty’s web unhindered.

Mycroft sighs, picks up his mobile and sends two texts.

_Hurry up._

_You are missed._

_Constantly._

_MH_

And the second, sent with a small, fond smile.

_Shall I pick you up_

_at the Yard at 7?_

_MH_

He receives a reply to the second one almost immediately, but then again, he had watched the recipient type it.

_Sounds great, love._

_By the way, your brother_

_is a massive twat._

_GL_

Mycroft doesn’t know what he would do without Greg to confide in.

*

John goes to the grave, on the anniversary. He doesn’t go alone.

They fill the cab. Molly and Dimmock crush into the front with the cabbie, and Lestrade sits in the back with Mrs. Hudson and John. John isn’t positive how he feels about not being alone for this. On one hand, it is good to have his friends with him (it is good to have friends again, period.). But on the other hand, John doesn’t know what seeing the grave again will do to his self-control.

John gets the best of both worlds. He has people there, to stand with him at first, to place their flowers and remember. Then, in an unspoken agreement, they all leave John in peace to “pay his respects”.

The headstone has a dusting of pine needles spread across the top. Gently, so gently, John brushes them away. His fingertips linger on the cool marble.

“Last time I was here, I told you to stop being dead,” he says in a quiet, incredulous voice. “God, I wish you’d listened.” He huffs a slight laugh. “You never were good at listening.”

He shuffles a bit closer, keeping contact with the stone and staring at the writing.

“There was a lot I didn’t get to say. I suppose you knew that. Ella – my therapist, you’d probably deleted that – asked me to say it when I went to see her almost a year ago. I couldn’t then. Frankly, I…” John’s breath hitches, catches on the mess of aches in his chest. “I can barely say it now, but no-one’s listening, so maybe it’s okay.” He pauses, takes a shaky breath. “First off, I am _so angry_ with you. I said that before, with Mrs. Hudson. I told her I wasn’t that angry, but I am, God, Sherlock…”

His cheeks are wet.

“I’d probably punch you in the face, if you were to appear right now, to be honest, you wanker. _You left me_.”

“But really, after I get past the anger, and the hurt that you didn’t trust me enough to talk to me, to let me help you, I just miss you. Hear that? I miss you so much I can’t breathe some days.

“Also, you probably knew this already, but I love you. Did from the start, probably. Not that it did much good. I wish I’d told you. I get the feeling it wasn’t something you heard enough, as much as you deserved.”

John quirks the sides of his mouth up, but it isn’t a smile. He’s too drained for that, at this point in _this_ day.

“People are starting to believe again. In you, I mean. I didn’t do as you asked, and I’m sorry. It was a lie I couldn’t tell. I was too proud of you, of your huge mad brain. Am too proud. I keep seeing grafitti, and it’s becoming more widespread.” John pulls a flyer out of his pocket. It is black, with stencil-painted red letters on it. “’I believe in Sherlock’, they say, now. I never stopped.” He bends to tuck the corner of the flyer under one of the fresh bouquets.

John swipes one last errant needle from the headstone and starts to move away.

“You were the best thing that ever happened to me,” he says to his feet. It seems to great a challenge to look upon the tangible marble reminder again. “I just hope you knew.”

John straightens. His shoulders drop and push back, his chin lifts and he sets his jaw. The tears have dried to tacky trails on his face but he doesn’t touch them. John strides away across the graveyard, towards the huddle of people up on the drive.

This time, there is no-one watching from the shadows of the trees.

*

_Transcript from Call #3929538 – Blocked Number 23:34 18/06/13_

S: _Please. I just want to go home, Myc._

M: I know. You can’t.

S: _I haven’t heard his voice in a year. A year, Mycroft. Do you have any idea how that feels?_

M: You survived over 30 years without hearing his voice, Lock. Survive a few more.

S: _I can’t do this. I’m cold, my stitches ripped again and… I miss him. Just ten minutes, that’s all I’m asking._

M: Bargaining will get you nowhere, and you know you wouldn’t be satisfied with that. Besides, would it be worth it, to watch him get shot in front of your eyes?

_S does not reply._

M: I thought not. It may help you to know, he went to the grave yesterday.

S: _How… how did he look?_

M: Happier. And sadder.

S: _That is spectacularly unhelpful, Mycroft._

M: He’s still just as devastated, Sherlock, what the hell do you want me to say?

S: _Is this line secure?_

M: That is an asinine question.

S: _The project I’m working on now, in Murmansk… I could use a hand with it._

M: You want me to come to Russia? I couldn’t, Sherlock. I am far too busy.

S: _Please, Myc._

M: … I’ll see what I can do.

S: _Thank you._

Sebastian Moran leans back in his chair and smiles, cutting off the recording.

“Gotcha, boys.”

*

After six months, Seb has to admit that no, he didn’t have them after all. He’d come the closest in Tibet, after a merry chase through Russia that had him breathing down the younger Holmes’ neck more than once. He’d suspected that little weasel hadn’t actually died at the same time as Jim, but the confirmation had come with the phone call to his brother from Murmansk. Seb had thought the short doctor flatmate, the one left behind, was just a very good actor for a few months after that, but eventually realized that John Watson didn’t know. This makes Seb’s blood shiver excitedly in his veins. It’ll make a lovely last resort to bleed the ex-army doctor dry, just to smoke Sherlock out.

It irks Seb that Sherlock is forever out of his reach. The call from northern Russia had been a ruse, and when Seb arrived to record low temperatures and a trap he cursed his own eagerness. It makes his fingers itch for the trigger of his AWM L115A3 rifle and he fantasizes about what Sherlock’s face would look like framed in crosshairs.

It’s all that keeps him going, really. He does, after all, have a rapidly crumbling criminal empire to maintain despite his (well-locked up) grief, and imagining creative ways to kill Sherlock and John helps him through the worst nights.

That’s always been the way Seb has dealt with sorrow, he realizes when he thinks about it. Jamming the emotions down under roiling layers of rage and bloodlust. It was why he’d joined the army after his mother’s death, and why he’d taken up with Jim after being discharged from the military. Seb has found, over the years, that violence suits him. Hell, it doesn’t just suit him: Seb knows he wears violence like a fucking Westwood three-piece.

Working with Jim had been perfect. He got paid to do what he delighted in. He didn’t even think twice about it, doing the work he did. And for once, for _once_ in his life, he was in the company of someone who didn’t see his affinity for violence as a detriment to his character. In fact, Seb realized quickly (somewhere between the loaded glances, the frantic biting kisses and the violent, bruising fucking on concrete while Seb’s rifle cooled beside them) that Jim _really_ didn’t mind Seb’s violent nature.

Finding an oozing body lying on the roof at Bart’s, still smiling faintly, was the first thing in years to make Seb think twice about the value of violence.

But now the bloodlust is back with vengeance, and Seb just wants to _hurt_. He chased Sherlock across Russia and into China, only to find that his own support network there had all but collapsed. Cursing the Holmes name, he’d driven Sherlock out into Burma. With Mycroft’s help, Sherlock always found himself one step ahead of Seb. Somehow, the man had also acquired a latticework of contacts in the most unusual places. Sebastian often arrived in cities to find that Sherlock had been spirited away on some obscure billionaire’s dime.

It’s endlessly frustrating for Seb. He has other things he should be doing, but he can’t let go of the man, the reason Jim is dead. Seb doesn’t think he loved Jim, but then, their relationship _had_ been dangerously co-dependant. _Like Sherlock and his army doctor_ , thinks Seb with a nasty, vindictive tone to the thought. _Oh, it will be nice to watch them both burn. Just like Jim wanted_.

So Seb chases Sherlock, across continents and in circles, slow concentric circles. Seb intends for him to get so dizzy that he won’t even see the final blow coming. He wants Sherlock’s world to be spinning and frantic when Seb takes his kill shot. All Sherlock will be able to do is watch as everything he has practically died to protect goes up in flames.

It takes Seb another year and a half, but he’s not bothered, really. In his mind, vengeance only gets better with age.

Three years on after Jim’s death, Seb finds himself killing time at a casino in Leicester Square. When Ronald Adair catches him cheating at cards and Seb is forced to take him out (a shot from 500 meters into the open window of his fourth floor flat later that night, child’s play to Seb) it never occurred to him that it would be this footnote murder that brings Sherlock back to London at last.

It’s not quite as good as drawing him back on a trail of John Watson’s blood, but it’ll do.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update coming within a week, edited Chapter 1 for clarity.

**Author's Note:**

> With regards to the murder John solves, I have no medical or forensic training whatsoever, I'm just flying by the seat of my pants.


End file.
